Israel`s Losing Hand On Deportation

December 23, 1992

To no one`s surprise, Israel`s Supreme Court gave its approval Tuesday to the deportation of 415 Palestinians to Lebanon from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The court has never disapproved a deportation.

Neither, really, had Lebanon, where the Israeli military has been accustomed to dumping deportees. This time, however, Lebanon declined to play its usual meek role. As a result, the deportees have been forced into a kind of no-man`s-land, highlighting the dreadful injustice of Israel`s punitive deportations.

Israel would be best advised to end this episode by rescinding the deportations, returning the Palestinians to their homes and, if it has hard evidence against any individuals, trying them in a court of law.

At day`s end Tuesday, the 415 Palestinian men remained stranded on a frozen patch of territory between Lebanon and Israel. Residents of the occupied territories, they were rounded up by Israeli forces and expelled summarily last Thursday in retaliation for the killings of six Israeli soldiers in eight days.

But Lebanon`s refusal to accept the deportees threw a monkey wrench into the operation. On Monday, when the Palestinians attempted to march south, back toward Israel, the Israeli-allied South Lebanon Army laid down a barrage of artillery and machine-gun fire to prevent them.

Two of the deportees were slightly wounded. All were kept from returning and have been stranded ever since, huddling in tents supplied by the International Red Cross and becoming-as if one were needed-yet another metaphor for the unresolved plight of their people as a whole.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin continues to defend the deportations in the face of virtually unanimous condemnation by the rest of the world. The men, he said, are part of ``one of the most murderous groups that ever walked the Earth.``

The group to which he referred is Hamas, an extremist Palestinian group that has claimed responsibility for killing the Israeli soldiers and makes no secret of its desire to torpedo the Mideast peace talks between Israel, its Arab neighbor states and the Palestinians.

Regrettably, it appears perilously close to doing just that. The killings have inflamed Israel; the deportations have inflamed the Palestinians, and the spectacle of men convicted of nothing being expelled into limbo merely fuels the sulfurous passions.

Israel, however, stands to lose the most in this. It will give Hamas a victory if it allows the terrorists` murderous provocations to kill the peace talks. Israel`s wisest course-for the sake of peace and for the sake of the democratic ideals to which it professes allegiance-would be to rescind the deportations, search out the actual killers and try them in a court of law.